Many years ago, as the elderly passed by Guadalupe Bridge from Bonifacio or from Buendia, they can't help but look at the once thriving and beautiful Pasig River or Ilog Pasig and feel a combination of sadness and anger well up inside them. .
The once navigable Pasig River flows through the city, dividing it into two sections, with Intramuros (the old Spanish walled city) and Ermita (the site of most government buildings and tourist hotels) on the south bank, and the "newer- section (which includes the commercial district, many congested slum areas, and the Chinese quarter in Binondo) on the northern bank. Malacañang Palace, the presidential mansion, is located along Pasig River.
Before pollution virtually extinguished aquatic life, the whole 25 km of the Pasig River between Laguna de Bay and Manila Bay served as a habitat for 25 varieties of fish and 13 different types of aquatic plant. Today, there are only six species of fish and two types of plants left that can tolerate the polluted water.
By the 1980's there was no more river tourism, fishing and swimming were no longer permissible.
Ilog Pasig became a dirty, stinking open-air sewer. .
The banks of the Pasig River were lined by squatter colonies consisting of approximately 12,000 households. About 2,000 families lived in houses on stilts or under the bridges, in sub-human conditions, where they presented a danger to themselves and to the vessels using the river. These settlements had no sanitary facilities and their liquid and solid wastes are discharged straight into the river. Though they did not like living beside such filth, these people had no choice. They were poor and land was scarce in the city.
Ilog Pasig was not spared. Numerous factories sprang up on her banks, factories that vomited their waste into the great river until its water was contaminated with all manner of poisons, all of them so vile that the river flowed black, and nothing could live in it.
And while we await expectantly upon Spain some day to restore your good name and cease to be answerable for your death, let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over one who without clear proofs attacks your memory stains his hands in your blood." ... Sa Ilog Pasig ay sumasalunga ang Bapor Tabo. ... Napag-usapan ang pagpapalalim ng ilog Pasig. ...
